


Healing

by jetplane



Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27057727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetplane/pseuds/jetplane
Summary: In an alternate universe where some people have special abilities, the BAU tracks down an unsub who is using their healing power to enact vigilante justice.prompt: magical healing (day 15)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946050
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Healing

**Author's Note:**

> see endnote for content warnings
> 
> This is my first time writing agent-as-unsub and my first time writing a fic with supernatural elements, so let me know how you think I did! Enjoy!

“We’ve got a new case,” Garcia announces, tossing case files onto the table. “And let me tell you, mes amies, it’s an ugly one.” She presses a button and crime scene photos flood the monitor. 

“Ugh.” Prentiss scrunches up her face. “Where is this?”

“Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” Garcia reports. “They’ve reported six victims, all men. The youngest was twenty-nine and the oldest was seventy-one.”

“Any connection between the victims?” Rossi asks. Garcia shakes her head. 

“That’s a huge age range,” Reid comments. He looks at the images more closely, then grabs a file folder from the center of the round table. “He’s crossing racial barriers, too.”

“He?” Prentiss questions. 

“Men are almost seven times more likely than women to commit homicide,” he replies, flipping open the folder. “And eighty percent of those homicides are strangers. Women almost always kill people they know.”

“Why weren’t we called in sooner?” Morgan asks. He leans back in his chair and twirls a pen. “Six bodies is a lot.”

“They didn’t realize it was serial until the most recent two.” She presses another button on the remote and the screen zooms in on two of the bodies. Wrapped around each of their necks is a chain. “Local PD went back and connected them to the other four.”

“Were they strangled?” Emily asks. 

Reid shakes his head, not looking up from his reading. “Cause of death was exsanguination. They bled to death.”

“That takes patience,” Hotch comments. He stands up from his chair and looks around at the team. “When we land, Prentiss and I will go to the most recent crime scene. Rossi and Morgan will go to the second most recent. Reid, I want you to talk to the coroner. Wheels up in thirty.” 

-

At the coroner’s office, all six bodies have been lain out. Reid walks between the tables, examining each body. Then he turns to the medical examiner. “Your report said that they all bled out,” he states, glancing at the deep wounds on each victim’s wrists. “But a cut to the radial artery would take at least a few minutes to render a person unconscious. Were there any defensive wounds?”

The coroner shakes his head. “As far as I can tell, all the victims had been restrained.” He points to the red marks around one of the victim’s ankles. 

Spencer frowns. “With the chains?” he asks. 

“No, with some kind of rope,” the coroner replies. “And there’s something else you should know.”

“What is it?”

“All of the victims had injuries in various stages of healing, all somewhere between one week and a month before they were killed. Two had broken bones, three had been stabbed multiple times, and one appeared to have been shot.” He hands the agent a stack of reports. “It’s all in here.”

Reid frowns and flips through the papers. “Thank you,” he says absentmindedly. “I’ll let you know if we have any further questions.”

Outside the medical examiner’s office, Spencer pulls out his cell phone. “Garcia, it’s Reid.”

“My good doctor! What can I do for you?”

“I just talked to the coroner, and he said that all the victims had been injured in the month before they were killed. Can you find the medical and police reports?” he asks. 

“Can I?” Garcia chuckles. “Why must you doubt me like this? I’ll have the reports for you in a flash.”

-

The team gathers in a conference room at the local precinct. Both crime scenes had turned up with relatively little useful evidence.

“Garcia, you’re on speaker,” Reid announces. He looks around at the others. “The coroner said that all of the victims had been injured within a month of their deaths. I asked her to look for police and hospital records.”

Hotch nods. “Good thinking. Garcia?”

“Uh, yeah.” The analyst sounds harried. “About that. I actually couldn’t find anything on any of the victims. Like, nothing at all. Zilch.”

Spencer frowns. “That’s not possible,” he says. He holds up the file. “One of the victims was shot three times. He has to have sought medical care for that.” 

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Penelope says. “There are no records of any of that. As far as I can tell, all the victims were in perfect health when they died.”

“Could the records have been deleted?” Rossi asks. 

“I don’t think so,” Penelope replies. “None of the hospitals in the area have reported any kind of security breach. If someone hacked them, they would have to be very, very good.”

“Keep looking, Garcia.” Hotch presses a button and ends the call. He glances at the other agents. “Thoughts?”

“What about a special ability?” Prentiss blurts out. Everyone turns to look at her. “Isn’t there some kind of ability that could let a person hack a computer without it looking like it had been hacked?”

They ponder the possibility for a moment. Special abilities weren’t uncommon; about a third of the population had one. But most were limited. Emily could only detect a person’s lies when she was touching them, while Rossi’s telepathy only worked on people in the same room as him. Morgan, who could create or contain small explosions, was the most powerful of the group and something of an anomaly within the Bureau. And even he couldn’t use it more than a few times a week. 

“Technokinesis,” Reid supplies. “It’s rare, but it does exist.”

“But we still don’t know how the victims got hurt in the first place,” Morgan points out. “If it was the unsub, why would he injure them and then let them go? Why not just kill his victims the first time he gets the chance?”

“And why didn’t the victims report anything? Even if police reports had been deleted, someone would remember what had happened.”

“Wait,” Rossi says. “What if we’re thinking about this wrong?”

Hotch tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe the unsub didn’t attack the victims twice. Maybe to him, it was the same event.” The older profiler looks at Reid. “Are there any abilities that would allow an unsub to manipulate time?”

Spencer frowns. “Enough to compress a month into a few hours or less?” He shakes his head. “You could count the number of people with that much power on one hand.”

Just then, the phone rings again. It’s Garcia. “What do you have for us, baby girl?” Morgan asks. 

“Well, I still haven’t figured out what happened to all those police reports. But I did find something else. Three of the victims had been accused of sexual assault, but each accusation was dropped. Either there wasn’t enough evidence or their alleged victim decided not to continue with the investigation.”

“That doesn’t sound like a coincidence,” Rossi comments. “The unsub probably has experienced sexual assault or is close to someone who did.”

Derek shakes his head. “That’s not enough to go on. There are thousands of cases every year, and most assaults don’t even get reported.”

“Still, we have a motive now. Garcia, are there any accusations against the first victim?” Hotch glances at the file. “Ethan Howard?”

“Are you thinking the first victim might be the most important?” Dave asks. 

Penelope types on her keyboard. “Ethan Howard was a high school guidance counselor. There are no accusations, but I’m seeing that he transferred jobs three times in the past seven years. That’s a red flag, isn’t it?”

“Definitely,” Hotch says. “Can you cross-reference him with men between the ages of thirty and fifty who live in the Pittsburgh area and have an unusually powerful special ability?”

“Two names,” Garcia reports. “Temperature manipulation and...something to do with birds.” She clicks on one of the names. “Birdman has been arrested twice for criminal mischief.”

Hotch shakes his head. “That doesn’t track. We’re missing something.”

Rossi frowns, folding his hands in front of him. “Garcia, expand the list to women as well.” Hotch raises a questioning eyebrow. “Just a hunch,” he explains. 

“Okay, we’re up to eight. Two have telekinesis and three are telepaths in one form or the other. The others have water-breathing, healing, and...the ability to walk through walls.” 

“Wait, healing?” Reid asks. 

Morgan’s eyes light up. “That could explain the injuries. Baby girl, what’s the healer's name?”

“Her name is Roslyn Jareau and...wait. It’s not her. She died over twenty years ago.” Her shoulders slump. 

“How did she die?” Rossi asks. 

“Suicide,” Garcia says glumly. “She was seventeen. Her eleven-year-old sister found her in the bathroom with her wrists cut open.”

“Just like the victims,” Prentiss murmurs. “And it sounds like she might have been a victim of Howard. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Abilities are partially genetic,” Reid muses. “Garcia, are either of her parents healers?”

“Nope,” she says almost immediately. “But her sister is. Jennifer Jareau, age thirty-two.”

“This is the sister who found her body?” Hotch clarifies. “What else do we know about her?”

“Um, she went to the University of Pittsburgh. It looks like she was studying criminal justice but dropped out before getting her degree. After that, Jennifer married William LaMontagne, Jr. and moved to New Orleans for several years. She just came back a month ago, after her husband filed for divorce papers, and has been spending almost all her time on message boards dedicated to vigilante justice and survivors of sexual abuse.”

“Do you have an address?” Hotch asks. 

“Sending it to you now.”

The unit chief gets up. “I think we have our unsub. Let’s go.”

-

“Jennifer Jareau,” Morgan shouts. “FBI! Open up!” No response. He kicks down the door and the agents swarm inside. 

The house is sparsely furnished. Only one chair sits at the kitchen table, and the shelves appear mostly empty. But the walls are covered in papers, a mix of website printouts and handwritten notes interspersed with pictures of JJ and Roslyn. Reid sees two of the victims’ names on sticky notes. One list has Ethan Howard’s name circled a dozen times in red. “It’s definitely her,” he hisses to the team. 

A sound draws the team’s attention to a basement door. “She might have another victim down there. Let’s go.” Morgan carefully pushes it open and heads down the stairs, Prentiss and Rossi following closely behind. They descend a flight of stairs. 

Inside, a blonde woman stands holding a gun to the head of a man tied to a chair. His head lolls forward and blood stains his shirt. “Jennifer Jareau, this is the FBI,” Morgan warns. “Step away from him and put down the gun.”

JJ’s eyes widen. “No, back away!” she shouts. 

“We can’t do that, Jennifer,” Reid says. “You killed six people. You used your healing ability to injure them over and over again before they died.”

“You don’t know what he’s done!” Tears run down her face. “He deserves to die!”

“Because of what he did to people like your sister?” Hotch asks. JJ looks up at him with wide eyes. “Jennifer, we know what Ethan Howard did to Roslyn.”

“It wasn’t right!” she yells, jabbing the gun into the side of the man’s head. “It wasn’t right, and he just got away with it. They all did!”

“I know,” Morgan says softly. “I know it’s not fair. But think about your sister, Roslyn.”

“I am,” she cries. “That’s why I have to kill him. He has to know what it feels like.”

“Jennifer, if you try to hurt him, we’re going to have to shoot you. Do you think your sister would have wanted that?” Hotch asks. She wavers. “I don’t think Roslyn would have wanted you to get hurt.”

“Just put the gun down,” Derek coaches. “That’s all you have to do. Put the gun down, and I promise that we’ll conduct a full investigation.”

JJ eyes him nervously. “You’ll make sure he goes to jail?”

“We’ll do everything we can,” Prentiss promises. “But you have to put down the gun now.”

Her hand drops slightly, and it’s enough for Morgan to sweep in. She lets him take the gun from her hands and pull them behind her back. As Derek handcuffs her, she starts to cry again. “It’s not fair,” she wails. 

“I know, I know,” Derek mutters. Behind them, Hotch and Reid check on the bound victim. “It’s time to go now.”

“It’s not fair. I couldn’t save her!” she sobs. “I’m sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for referenced sexual abuse of a minor, mentions of suicide, and some description of corpses. Also mentions of guns and weapons/injuries in general (not graphic)
> 
> Am I the only one who didn't know that "mischief" was an actual crime you could get arrested for? Sorry, I just found that out and had to mention it somewhere. Also, since I realized I forgot to explain the chains around the victims' necks, I wanted to explain that it was supposed to be a reference to the necklace JJ's sister gave her before she died. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this story! It was definitely a change from my usual stuff, and I'm not sure how much more supernatural elements I'll be including in future fics, but I like the way this prompt made me branch out. Let me know what you think!


End file.
